I have decided that it’s not a good idea to stand at the kitchen window here in my friend’s house in NH for fear that I’ll find myself heading out the door to take pictures. It was a blue jay on the bird feeder who got me out the door, and the sound of the nearby Blackwater river took care of the rest. I also found some neighbors I hadn’t met yet also. The bird feeders in the backyard were visited by a bear a few nights ago. Now that would have been a photo op…

I stopped at a favorite hometown park on my way to NH yesterday. It was a gorgeous day, even more gorgeous after nothing but rain for a week. I met another photographer there and we had a nice chat as we took pictures. It was a perfect day until I got a message that I’d left my laptop behind at a friend’s house. And that news left me determined to learn to use this iPad to import the photos from the camera, and edit them, and then get this post written. There probably was an easier way to accomplish all of the, but there is the easy way and there is my way. I will retrieve my laptop soon, but this will do for today.

New Hampshire! Finally! The story begins, or so I thought. But it seems I’ve been dropping breadcrumbs on my pilgrimage to get here. So that I could find my way back home eventually perhaps? My ‘nice’ black shoes and my sweatshirt jacket that I wanted to bring with me apparently never made it out of my house, I hope. As opposed to having lost them along the way. The jacket I intended to borrow from my daughter is still at her house. And before I even missed it I was informed that I had left my laptop at my friend’s house yesterday. Really? Of all things. As I drove the last leg of the trip to my destination for these next couple of weeks I was anticipating sitting with the laptop in it’s newly updated state, and looking at the photos I had been taking along the way. So it will be a few days until I can go back to retrieve it, along with my favorite pillow that I’ve now realized hasn’t made it here either. But my iPad is here with me, thank goodness. But there will be a learning curve. Sigh. And so it begins.

This is the last of my Hershey adventures from a few days ago. I got so excited over the butterflies in the atrium that I hardly noticed the flowers in the garden at Hershey. Not that I didn’t take pictures of them, I did. But I did them first since it wasn’t raining at that point. I took more of them than I realized actually, but once it started raining and I went inside I have to admit that I was quite overwhelmed with the butterflies. I love when I happen to take tons of pictures in one day and I have a day or two when I can just process the ones I already have and take it easy. It’s especially helpful at this exact moment while I sort out my computer storage issues. Milton Hershey did amazing things for his community, and this is just one of them. It was lovely. The only disappointment for me was the fact that the lilacs were a tease. Not open enough to be pretty, and, more importantly, try as I might I couldn’t smell them. I hope I find them again in my travels…

Two of them anyhow. There are more, but they weren’t in York, PA for the very busy weekend we just had. If it hadn’t kept on raining, and raining, and raining, I’d have gotten out for more pictures and possibly might not have invaded their privacy the way that I have today. Of course I’m proud to show them off. They are beautiful people inside and out.

And I’m happy to be in York PA just in time for the laptop to be warning me that my storage situation had reached the ‘critical’ storage. You see my daughter has an Apple Store less than a half hour from her house, and the Genius there got my external hard drive tweaked enough to let me store my info and backups on that. But he also warned me not to attempt to do this myself, wait for Apple Care to call me tonight and walk me through it. It was a “Don’t-try-these-moves-at-home” sort of thing. You don’t have to be a genius to follow their directions.

I made sure to be visiting my daughter over this weekend so that I could be here for my grandson’s piano recital on Saturday. That my granddaughter’s prom was also on Saturday was an extra added bonus I knew nothing about until I got here. Then you have my grandson’s soccer game in the rain. It was a must play game, so the fact that they were slogging around in the extremely wet grass, and the game went into overtime at the last possible second, made for a tough morning. The ball was landing with a splash and just stopping, not the usual game they were used to. And our team was supposed to be in a neighboring town for another game at noon, they would have had roughly an hour between games, but they started a little late and their game took longer than usual. According to the parents I overheard that it was because the ref was calling non-existent fouls. Then if they had won their noon game there would have been a final game at 4PM, but mercifully the fields were closed and those games were called before this game was over. I watched mostly from the car since the wind was blowing the rain sideways and I couldn’t keep the camera 100% dry. But I have to say I love this camera since it let me crop down shots that I took from a distance, zoomed all the way out. and the shots were hand-held, (photographers will know that that’s not easy and I’m giving the camera all the credit). But once I got cold enough to be shivering I couldn’t keep the camera still and retreated back to the car. This is my daughter’s weekend routine, but not always in the rain. Sometimes it’s snow! My grandson, #15, is not starring in all these pictures, some are the other team even, I just became obsessed with trying to capture the extreme conditions. And it’s still raining today…The blurry looking picture is actually the rain. And did I mention that after all that they lost the game? I suppose it’s character building…

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Hello

When you notice a class on blogging, and it’s offered on your day off, you just might wind up with a blog of your own. There are so many photo-worthy things to see here on the Nature Coast of Florida, and it’s a shame to keep them to myself. Sharing is a good thing, right?

All of the above is still true but time has brought some very welcome changes to my life, and I’m no longer on the nature coast of FL. At least not right at this minute. I’m now a snowbird, who has flown to the snow instead of away from it. So there is no telling where I’ll be posting from on any given day, but I will get my snowbird seasons straightened out. Eventually.